Are you serious, editing PHP in order to blog

  • I am finding WordPress incredibly difficult to configure. Are there really that many people out there learning php in order to blog with it? All I want is a nice list of subscribe icons in my right sidebar. There is a widget called Subscription Icons to do that, but it requires something called Meta and when I enable that I get four text items that I don’t want to see on my blog: Log in, Entries RSS, Comments RSS, www.remarpro.com.

    Extensive search and reading indicates a lot of people want the same thing. But can we get it? Apparently not without writing or editing php. Many forums replies indicate that there is no definitive source for these 4 unwanted items. I followed some instructions to edit widgets.php and it made no difference.

    If anyone knows how to create a list of subscribe icons in a sidebar without putting up a mandatory Log in, Entries RSS, Comments RSS, www.remarpro.com section, I think they will be very popular if they make this information available.

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • You would probably need to edit your template real quick. Try wp-content/themes/yourthemename/sidebar.php. There should be some code near the bottom for meta. You can take out the links you mentioned and leave the rest of the code for the section.

    Make sure to backup this file if you don’t know what you are doing. It is possible to cause an error that cuts your blog off from the sidebar.

    Customization will almost always involve code in any application worth using. Where it doesn’t you usually sacrifice flexibility and performance. I’m glad I can use PHP in WP templates and we aren’t stuck with something like SMARTY template engine.

    Guess you could look for a theme that already has the subscription icons available.

    Michael, could I address this to you as moderator.

    I’m kinda with the original question … that WP does provide an amazing mix of quick & easy with powerful & sophisticated … but I wouldn’t want it any other way. I know enough PHP to be dangerous … to customise a few specifics, or fix a problem between two plug-in / widgets, which I find I do need to do occasionally, despite the fact I’ve been blogging succesfully for 7 years, that last 2 or 3 with WP.

    SIMPLE QUESTION – is there a WP PHP Reference guide that includes “definitions” of the functions and variables ?

    PHPXREF is comprehensive, but has no definitions. Is my only alternative reverese-engineering / trial-and-error ?

    Category:Template_Tags and Category:Functions document a good many of the WordPress functions and template tags.

    Thanks Michael, that’s more like it. The Category:Functions page is a good start and it links to the Category:Template_Tags page as a sub-category.

    One supplementary question … something I was also trying to figure out. My question was about which bits of PHP were in the wp-includes folder and which were in the wp-content, themes and plug-ins folders ?

    I’m guessing after reading the two links provided, that despite the original intent, it doesn’t much matter which folder they’re in, they will be found so long as my (customized) copy of WordPress PHP’s is on my server in one of those folders, whether it originated in the template or a theme or whatever ?

    As I said, just enough to be dangerous ??

    I don’t like the Meta WIDGET either. I like to hand code my stuff because I am a control freak. You can use text widgets to embed HTML (such as subscribe to me code) into a widget. And normally you can’t put PHP code into a widget. But this plugin lets you do that and more. I cannnot live without it:
    https://www.erik-rasmussen.com/blog/2006/11/30/widgetize-anything/

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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